VeggieTales: LarryBoy and the Bad AppleReview

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Follow LarryBoy's example, resist the temptation to play this game.

By Micah Seff

Christian-themed games are few and far between. While games such as Bible Adventures on the NES and The Bible Game on the PS2 have each filled the slot rather mundanely, none of them has taken as subtle an approach to proselytizing children as VeggieTales: LarryBoy and the Bad Apple. LarryBoy is tied to a series of CG animated home videos aimed at children wherein anthropomorphic vegetables get involved in a series of comical situations, all the while instilling kids with positive values. The aim of both the video series and the game itself is to provide children with "Sunday morning values, [and] Saturday morning fun!" While LarryBoy and the Bad Apple does focus a whole lot on the "values" side of the slogan, somehow developer Papaya Studio forgot to include one iota of the aforementioned "Saturday morning fun."

Based directly on the DVD movie of the same name, LarryBoy and the Bad Apple features an admittedly shallow and transparent storyline involving a villainess named the Bad Apple who is hell-bent on plunging the peaceful town of Bumblyburg deep into the darkest depths of temptation. Only the masked hero LarryBoy has what it takes to save the citizens of Bumblyburg from themselves. It is this premise that drives the gameplay throughout the game and each of its levels sees the Bad Apple capturing a different friend of LarryBoy whiel trapping them in a web of temptation. Larryboy must hobble around like some malformed jellybean in an effort to rescue his friends from the temptations that may devour their souls.

LarryBoy himself functions as some sort of ill-conceived Batman parody even down to the presence of a butler named Alfred. The first thing anyone will realize when they pick up this game is that LarryBoy has no appendages. He instead must interact with his environments through the usage of his S.M.A.R.T. cape which gives him the ability to glide indefinitely, transform into various materials, and perform a spin attack. LarryBoy's only other means of environmental interaction is through his plunger ears (yes, it's as stupid as it sounds) which can help him grapple as well as slingshot himself should the occasion call for it. Unfortunately, most of the Dual Shock's buttons are wasted on performing these menial maneuvers. LarryBoy never gets any attack abilities besides his initial "whirlybird" move, and each of the transformative moves amounts to little more than a means with which to activate switches in the environments.

What follows (after a basic tutorial in LarryBoy's extensive repertoire of moves) amounts to nothing more than an exercise in traditional 3D platformer gameplay mechanics that have already been beaten to death in recent years. In one scenario, LarryBoy must find a switch to open a door; in another he must kill all of the enemies in a single room to open a door; and in the biggest surprise of them all, occasionally he must jump on moving platforms in order to reach a door! The entirety of the game plays out as one giant, stale amalgamation of mechanics which grew tiresome during the N64 days.

All of this is tied together through some of the loosest controls ever featured in a videogame. Since LarryBoy is a limbless green tuber of some sort, he is not able even to walk, much less run. Instead, our intrepid hero simply cavorts around like some sort of half-dead Mexican jumping bean. There is no subtlety to the character's movements, and as such players will often find themselves falling off of platforms as they try to line up for the latest in a series of ludicrously mundane jumping puzzles.